My D3 snapped its crankshaft on NYE (happy new year by the way) so I'm suddenly looking at 59 plate 3.6 TDV8 with 80K on the clock. The owner is happy for me to plug in my GAP tool when I go to see it on Wednesday and has then told me two things:

"The only “fault” that I’m aware of is a sensor for the coolant levels which pops up on the dashboard randomly - my independent LR garage checked it and said that sensor often fails but nothing to worry about.

The car does occasionally lose a little fluid when using the air conditioning."

My D3 had the false low coolant warning last summer, it was the float not floating in the expansion bottle which wasn't a bad faff to replace. Is this a similar thing? But the occasional, slight loss with the AC - can anyone throw any light on that one?

I know I’m committing the mortal sin of throwing my entire budget to the car up-front because there will always be faults to deal with, but I’m trying to get as low a mileage example as possible. And, until Saturday, I was very happy with my 05 159K D3 and didn’t need a budget at all!

Many thanks for your thoughts.

If the fluid 'loss' was in line with the 'A' pillars and clear, then it's most likely just condensate from the airconditioning doing its stuff. The false positive with the coolant level warning, is just that - provided that it doesn't require too much topping up, anything up to 0.75 litre between annual service is acceptable.

I had the exact same issue with my D3 and before I could replace the coolant reservoir the crank snapped. The L322 I bought started doing the same thing with the coolant message and it was the same issue the sensor had stopped floating. A quick and cheap job to just swap out the reservoir. Though I haven’t had any coolant escaping.